Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Delicious wishes

I started a del.icio.us account about 2 months ago, at the same time as my Digg account (see previous posting) but my first attempt to find interesting links on other people's lists proved disappointing. I think maybe the subject I chose was very limited or, the people interested in it haven't discovered social bookmarking as yet (more than likely!). I have now started using it to bookmark interesting sites and other online bits and pieces relating to this Learning 2.0 or Web 2.0 training and today I learned how to bundle my tags!

I thought Sutherland Shire's library tag cloud was fantastic, especially the Aboriginal Australians bundle and the Environmental bundle. The cloud of unbundled tags seemed a bit odd, especially with tags such as 'steel'. I am not sure of the usefulness of an unbundled tag cloud or perhaps free tags that don't fit a category should be kept to a minimum. I think tag clouds are great because they appeal to users who like to think in a different way, whereas other users prefer their information very ordered and set out in a traditional manner.

Sure, I can see the potential for using this at the library, especially for people doing family or local research, or HSC students, for example. Sometimes users are not sure exactly what they are looking for and a hierarchical index isn't always the best idea. They often need suggestions of keywords within the area they are researching and tag clouds would be perfect because they allow browsing and the user can see all the keywords or tags in one place at one time. Tag clouds are also so easy to create in the first place and tagging seems to be everywhere!

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